Tag: medical devices

In-brief: St. Jude Medical said on Monday that it patched a serious hole in a product used to program implantable medical devices like defibrillators. But researchers and a Wall Street investment firm say the company still has more holes to close.

In-brief: The FDA’s final guidance on cybersecurity for postmarket medical devicesmarks a departure from earlier drafts, focusing generically on cybersecurity risk management and jettisoning an early focus on the threat posed by “connected devices” that some considered too narrow.

Researchers from universities in Belgium and the UK have published research showing that a wide range of implantable medical devices, including implantable defibrillators are still vulnerable to wireless snooping and denial of service attacks. The research, which mimicked the work of a naive (or “weak”) adversary, found that few security protections have been added to such devices, years after researchers first demonstrated that they are vulnerable to wireless attacks and other manipulation. The discoveries apply to at least 10 types of implantable cardiac defibrillators (ICDs) that are currently on the market, though the devices and manufacturers are not named. The researchers, from Katholieke Universiteit te Leuven in Belgium (KU Leuven) and the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom echoes the claims made by the firm MedSec earlier this year, which warned of security holes in ICD devices made by St. Jude in August. That research was the foundation of a call […]

In-brief: After a year in limbo, the Librarian of Congress moved last week to allow a number of exceptions to the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that will clear the way for researchers to explore smart vehicles and other products.